


Sebomai

by Teabiscuit



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blasphemy, Body Worship, M/M, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2098581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teabiscuit/pseuds/Teabiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebomai: to worship, to show reverence and respect. Etymology for the name Sebastian.</p>
<p>Bucky is in love with Steve and with the saints. He cannot tell where the two separate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sebomai

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mx_marigold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mx_marigold/gifts).



Sebastian is dangerous: this, Bucky Barnes knows, knows it like he knows his Beatitudes. (Steve is Mark 5:6, Mark 5:5, Mark 5:10 all over but never 5:9. Steve will only be a peacemaker when there's nobody who needs fighting.) Bucky found a newsletter that mentioned Sebastian in it along with David and Jonathan. He kept the coded missile-missive in his bedside drawer before the other boys scared him into throwing it away with casual slurs and unspoken normalcy.

There's a book in the library nobody's allowed to take out because it would cost too much to replace. It's the sort of book Steve would like and it's easy to find the shiny pages made of magazine paper between the serious scholarly writings on the Religious Iconography in Works of the Painters of the Italian Renaissance. Bucky knows page 59, where the caption says _Rubens_ and _1614_.

Sebastian is auburn blond and only slightly tanned, as though he might be olive when he's not getting shot. Only some of his arrow wounds are trickling. The others are neat, unbloodied penetrations, and Bucky has no idea yet which ones are more accurate. His left arm is in shadow, almost vanished behind his body, a different shade of flesh and his eyes are heavenward. This Sebastian is a believer. Saint of soldiers and athletes. Saint of the others.

Bucky has the painting memorised.

He goes to Mass with Steve on Sunday morning. He mumbles through his Rosary and tries not to think of saints.

He does not confess.

Steve rises while Bucky is on his knees. He spends longer in the booth than he's ever spent sinning, Bucky is sure of it. He confesses to every time his thoughts have been uncharitable. There's a theme, though, to the things Steve won't confess, Bucky thinks – Bucky hopes. Because Bucky doesn't want to be confessed to. They are David and Jonathan, not two apostates up against an alley wall.

When Steve kisses him, he is undone.

Steve gets like this sometimes after Mass and confession. He was always the more devoted, after his mother and after his nuns. Steve is a believer with the power to make Bucky feel like a heretic because while Steve has been worshipping the Holy Mother, Bucky has been worshipping Steve, looking at him through his eyelashes as he echoes words devoutly.

Steve kisses as softly as a whimpered catechism. Bucky catches his chin between his thumb and index finger and pulls it up to bite his lips.

Bucky is unsure about many things in life, but Steve's beauty is a capitalised Truth he wants to sing poetics about. He could be muse as well as artist as easy as rolling over. His pale skin catches shadow like a Rubens, an idea Bucky smiles into Steve's neck. Steve scowls and pushes him away, eyeballing him to try and ascertain his seriousness.

Belief in Steve drops Bucky to his knees. He wants to chant all the angles of beauty he can see. Instead he puts his mouth to other uses.

Steve makes noises in a different language to the one he was uttering an hour ago. Bucky puts two thumbs on his hips and digs his nails in. He loves all the places Steve's muscles meet bone. They make him want to hum hymnals, but considering where his mouth is Steve might consider that a blasphemy too far. Steve's hips twitch and Bucky grins like a feral bobcat. He kisses hard against Steve's thighs, licks his soft stomach, scrapes his sternum underneath his Sunday shirt, all with teeth and adoration like no other.

If it were Bucky on the other end, he would be blaspheming. This is the gulf between them: Steve never will.

The next day Bucky goes to church alone. There's only evening light coming through the stained glass in the window where Jesus is bleeding. (Jesus and Sebastian wear the same expression. If not for the fact he saw it on Steve last night, Bucky would call it devotion.) He lights a candle for Helen because Steve would want him to and he puts a cent in the box because not even Bucky's that amoral. There's an hour before evening mass and the church is almost empty.

Bucky kneels. He thinks of truth. He prays.

**Author's Note:**

> Marigold wanted body worship and I, uh, might have taken the worship part too much to heart. My audience for this is apparently lapsed Catholics who like beatification porn and obscure references. So hello to all three of you and thanks for reading.


End file.
